A-Infos (en) Greece, anarchism espiv: The Working Class: The "Classical"/Marxist Approach and Anarchist "Interventions" (Part 2) (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

The following text is the second part of an article by the editor of 
Alerta.gr, Yiannis Voliatis, for the anarchist newspaper "Mavrokokini 
Simaia". The first part of the article was published in the December 
2023 issue of the newspaper while the second part is included in the 
January 2024 issue that has just been released . ---- You can read the 
first part of the article  HERE  and HERE ---- Part 2: Middle classes, 
cooperatives and migrant workers ---- (In the first part of the article, 
published in the December issue of the newspaper "Mavrokokini Simaia", 
we gave a definition of the working class according to the 
classical/Marxist approaches but also the anarchist "intervention" on 
them. In this second part we will talk about some social layers 
surrounding the working class, which can be its potential allies against 
the bourgeoisie. We will also mention a few things about the most 
underestimated part of our class: The immigrants/workers)

The Working Class, from the last quarter of the 20th century to the 
beginning of the 21st century, has undergone perhaps the most 
fragmentation of any historical period. This is due to the various 
transformations in the capitalist economy , such as digitalization and 
the entry of the internet and computers massively into production (4th 
Industrial Revolution), but also  the transfer of a huge part of its 
primary and secondary production (factories, agricultural production) in 
Third World countries , where there is cheaper labor. At the same time, 
in the so-called Western World, the tertiary sector has been 
over-inflated - that is, that of services and those who need 
professional expertise. Professional specialization  has, in turn, 
created further stratification within the Working Class, with a fairly 
large differentiation of wages, as well as the distinction of workers 
into those of the "blue collar" (manual-unskilled), the "white" ( office 
workers) and finally, the so-called "pink" workers (services, customer 
service).

In addition, many middle strata of working people have been created that 
cannot certainly be categorized as the classic Working Class, such as 
freelancers and self-employed , but who do not belong to the bourgeoisie 
either, while perhaps forming the bottom layer of the micro-bourgeoisie. 
But then again, it would be rather wrong to categorize them in the same 
bag as the small bosses (even the smaller ones), a category in which the 
surplus value/overlabour extraction relationship, which we mentioned in 
the first part of the article, is a characteristic and a component of 
the capitalist system. The development of technology and the creation of 
"jobs", essentially even one-person "businesses", has contributed the 
most to this part, especially in the last twenty years, where one can be 
the "owner" of such a " business", but with which he only derives 
surplus value from his/her personal work, even if there is capital 
produced. There, the difference between salary or business profit is 
often almost non-existent, due to the absence of both a boss and employees.

The various phases of the capitalist economy and the continuous economic 
crises, the reversal of the causes that created them and determined them 
as the outskirts of the working class, tend sometimes to multiply and 
sometimes to eliminate large parts of these middle classes, some of 
which are even gradually proletarianized . Even so, even if for most of 
the people of these strata it is very difficult to say whether or not 
they belong to the wider Working Class, in any case,  the greater part 
of them have more material interests in common with it than with 
Capital, and therefore are - potentially - its ally.

However, we must emphasize that several of these "allied middle strata" 
may have short-term interests contrary to those of the workers . Someone 
who is self-employed, a freelancer, who practices a service profession, 
a "handyman" like an electrician or a plumber, wants his work to be 
priced higher so that he can earn more. An artisan or small producer 
wants the product of his labor or his commodity to be sold at a higher 
price. But these people do not turn to a boss for an increase in their 
pay, but derive it from their customers, through commodity relations. 
Customers who primarily - and numerically speaking - are other workers, 
who, contrary to the desire and need of the former, need cheaper 
services and products, in order to make ends meet financially, to have a 
smaller percentage of their salary for such needs. Thus, initially, the 
interests of these two strata-classes seem to conflict. However, on a 
long-term level, these strata can and should be treated as allies.

The self-employed small craftsman and the poor agricultural producer , 
who are clearly not much superior to workers in terms of economic and 
subsistence level - while in specific cases they may even be inferior to 
some highly paid workers - are forced to increase the price of their 
products or services, in order to survive, due to competition with 
larger companies, with contracts, with monopolies, but also due to other 
economic factors and contradictions within the capitalist system (lack 
of demand for their products or services due to e.g. economic crisis, 
etc.). In this way, they are pushed several times to extinction, since 
they cannot cope with the competition. Therefore, they also have a 
greater interest in the overthrow of the capitalist relations that lead 
them to this situation than in their preservation, even if apparently 
their interests seem opposed, both to those of the big bosses and to the 
workers. A mutual understanding of this condition, both by the working 
class and by these "middle classes", is necessary, in order for these 
classes to realize their ultimate common interests. Of course, we must 
always emphasize that, as anarchists, when we talk about these middle 
classes, we are referring to cases where there is no extraction of 
surplus value or exploitation of the labor of others. In other words, we 
do not refer to the "small bosses" as an allied middle class . It has 
also been mentioned in the first part of the article the 
objection/addition of the anarchists to the classical/Marxist class 
analysis regarding the "ruler/ruled" relationship, in other words 
between him/her who, from his/her position in production, gives orders 
and to him/her who executes them.

Moving on, special mention must also be made of a form of work or 
"entrepreneurship" that flourishes nowadays and can have a largely 
"political" hue. We are talking about the so-called  "cooperative 
economy" , the condition in which a group of individuals decides to 
collectively invest some capital, in order to create a working 
environment in which  there are no boss/employee relationships  and the 
profit generated is shared equally among the members of the cooperative 
or the "co-operative", more often depending on the working hours that 
each one dedicated. The fact that there is no boss/employee relationship 
certainly does not eliminate the condition of the extraction of surplus 
value/surplus labor, which can appear and be extracted in the form of 
the "collective capitalist", an "invisible" concept of the enterprise 
that transcends - but at the same time consists of by- the managers 
themselves. The business needs maintenance and - if the participants 
judge it - new investments to increase profits. Something that in a 
typical business is the responsibility of the boss. The difference with 
a salaried worker, who is clearly a member of the Working Class, is in 
this case that the salary of the collaborator is not necessarily fixed 
and not subject to any employment contract, but depends on the profit of 
the enterprise and the agreement between the members of the cooperative. 
In other words, it is both a profit share and - in a sense - a salary. 
Furthermore, the same contradiction that applies to the self-employed in 
relation to the cost of the services they offer and the source of their 
profits (customers, in the majority the members of the Working Class), 
naturally also applies to the "co-operatives".

It follows here that, whether or not the members of these cooperative 
enterprises belong to an allied part of the working class,  goes beyond 
the clear economic framework and touches the political-ideological one: 
It has to do with the way they perceive themselves (as workers or as 
entrepreneurs), the purpose for which they chose the specific form of 
work (more profits/security or absence of a boss/employee relationship), 
whether they will try to prevent possible relationships with very 
negative aspects of capital extraction/surplus value that may exist 
around the that business (such as whether or not they will choose to buy 
raw materials produced by cheaper labor in order to save resources), but 
also devoting some of the excess capital produced and possible labor 
hours saved, to processes related to the case of class emancipation. In 
other words, it is to a large extent, as we said, part of an 
ideological-political attitude, which of course must be accompanied by 
the appropriate material conditions. Be that as it may, it is an 
entirely different motive for someone who saw her as an entrepreneur to 
"beat" her through a "collaborative venture," to privatize and buy out a 
comfortable life, and quite another to simply want to change her terms. 
of his work towards the less barbaric, in a more democratic work 
environment.

Unfortunately, the first case is the one that prevails to a large 
extent, as the "solidarity and cooperative economy", without any 
political filter, is promoted more and more by the system itself - 
especially by its social democratic manifestations (as we saw during the 
SYRIZA era) - as a relief valve for the rage caused by class 
inequalities and an "experiment" to grope for ways to overcome some of 
his own impasses. On the other hand, even if the "political cloak" 
exists, in no case can "self-management" be a general project within 
capitalist conditions, unless, as we said, it stands as an alternative 
for the improvement of working conditions, for less (or no) 
authoritarianism in the work environment, for an internal horizontality. 
However, in the case of the attempted suppression of BIO.ME. -one of the 
few cooperatives in Greece today that have managed to connect so 
strongly with the radical movement of our class, its agendas and needs- 
we saw how State and Capital can and want to respond to a further 
radicalization of the form " cooperation", that is, that goes beyond the 
limits of personal involvement.

It must be made clear, however, that  there is a huge gap between the 
"cooperatives" within the capitalist economy , which operate anyway in 
terms of market and profit,  and the collectivized enterprises (and 
factories, workshops, fields) of the social revolutions , such as e.g. 
the Spanish of 1936-39. The difference lies primarily in the social 
context, where on the one hand we are talking about individual survival 
within a capitalist market framework while on the other hand we are 
talking about a collectivization within a revolutionary society, which 
operated in terms of collective and direct coverage of its needs of 
society. Secondly, there is also a huge differentiation in targeting, 
with today's "co-operatives" being created mainly, as we said, from the 
will to ensure better working conditions and a certain labor democracy 
for a small group of co-workers, while on the other hand , the goal was 
clearly to replace the capitalist economy of capital and profit with 
libertarian communism, collective ownership of the means of production 
by the working class, and classless society.

Having clarified the above, let's not forget that our goal as anarchists 
is the total destruction of the world of capital, the authoritarian, 
exploitative, but also the commodity relations that it creates and not 
simply the redistribution and change of the conditions under which they 
take place . And a business, whether formal or cooperative, fatally 
reproduces the relations of "capital" and "commodity", since it actually 
operates in market conditions.

Karl Marx himself   was wary of the cooperatives and collectivized 
workplaces of his time - since such existed from the time of 
post-revolutionary France even, just before the middle of the 19th 
century, the famous "Laboratories" - sometimes commenting on them with a 
negative connotation and sometimes with more fervor, making special 
reference to them  in the Third Volume of the "Chapter" . Germanos 
mentions that these cooperatives are the first examples of "socialism" 
within capitalism, since they are opposed to the worker-boss contract, 
but they reproduce a large part of the problems of capitalism, such as 
trade and the production of goods that have as the purpose of profit and 
not the coverage of real life needs. And as already mentioned above, he 
shares the concern about the need not to see these cooperatives by the 
workers, as some kind of "solution" to capitalism. Of course, the 
reasons why Marx makes these observations differ from the conclusions 
drawn by an anarchist, since he refers, among other things, to the need 
for a "central planning of the economy" as part of his opposition to 
this phenomenon.

However, Mikhail Bakunin , in his work  "Government and Anarchy (1873)" 
, has criticized the "co-operatives" within capitalism  , saying more or 
less that although they are certainly one of the most rational and 
egalitarian ways of organizing work , however, in order to make it 
possible for riches, all kinds of capital and land to become tools for 
the liberation of workers - in order for them to enjoy the full product 
of their labor - they must first be transformed into collective (social) 
property. Otherwise, the collectives within capitalism will be subverted 
by the competition of big capital. But, the Russian anarchist continues, 
even if a small group of collectives succeeds in finding prosperity and 
survival within Capitalism, this will only have created a new class of 
cooperators, economically superior and better off than the working 
class. class.

And the anarchist movement itself, of course, discerned, through its 
practical experience, much of the contradictions that can arise in a 
partially and incompletely collectivized economy, where the concepts of 
market and commodity remain. We talked just above about the differences 
between today's market-based cooperatives and the collectives of the 
Spanish Revolution. And this last one, however, is not a perfect and 
idealized example in this field - how could it be in the midst of a 
harsh civil war? - on the contrary, it offers us the material we need to 
make all the above thoughts. More specifically, in this greatest 
historical moment of the anarchist movement, the collectivized factories 
and the agricultural collectives sometimes came into competition with 
each other, in terms of the part of the distribution of the products, 
i.e. the piece of the "pie" of the market that each would secure , 
particularly in areas where collectivism had not fully taken hold in the 
economy, but co-existed with more formal forms of work/economy. This 
happened because there was, for some time, no cooperation and 
coordination of the entire economy of a region in order to meet the 
needs of the workers, but internal horizontality in the workplace was 
accompanied by the maintenance of the commodity economy, money and 
market, factors which actually create competition and weaken the 
solidarity relations between the workers. The workers' committees - and 
not some "central state" - soon took measures to combat the phenomenon, 
such as the collective sharing of profits and surplus in the local 
community, which effectively eliminates the ill-conceived competition, 
that which is driven by the profit, while it can promote competition, 
i.e. the mutual push between workers and collectives, so that there are 
better results (eg in the economy) for society itself.

Be that as it may, all of the above are problems that arose in a 
revolutionary condition and the solutions that were attempted were of 
such a type as to serve the interests and purposes of this revolution, 
as well as the immediate material needs of an ongoing war conflict with 
the fascists. Whereas in a capitalist economy, these goals and these 
interests simply do not exist and any collectives and cooperatives, 
despite all the socially and working-class friendly measures they may 
take (such as ecological materials, lower prices), they remain simply 
businesses, organized in a different way inside them, a way that 
essentially serves, first and foremost, the same co-workers in them and 
not the whole of society or class.

***

Finishing with the part of concretizing the concept of the Working 
Class, it is important to mention the following: The condition of war is 
also another cause that can proletarianize large masses of people. There 
are areas of the planet, mainly in Africa and the Middle East, where war 
has not stopped for several decades now. In recent years, mainly in the 
area of the Eastern Mediterranean,  there has been an unprecedented wave 
of immigration of people from countries plagued by wars, civil and 
religious, "peaceful interventions" by Western capitalist powers, with 
the aim of exploiting the region's resources, etc. These people, who in 
their homelands may have even belonged to the bourgeoisie - but were 
more often part of the local proletariat - are most often forced to 
abandon all their possessions and arrive in the country of recourse 
literally only with the clothes they wear, while very few they only 
manage to have some kind of bundle, which they almost always use as a 
bargaining tool with slave traders to try to escape to some central 
European country, where they dream of having more opportunities or maybe 
meeting some of their relatives.

There is definitely a class stratification within this group of people 
as well, which is reflected today mainly by their level of education 
before the refugee. Let's not forget that a few years ago (2015), the 
then German chancellor Angela Merkel opened the German borders to an 
increased number of refugees, based on their professional 
specialization, i.e. she ensured cheap labor for German capital from 
people with specialized professional skills , but broken lives, who, 
with a sense of gratitude indeed, were called upon to man the working 
class of Germany. Both those who fled there and those who stayed in 
their countries of entry, in miserable living conditions,  are part of 
the global working class, more or less degraded, with few or minimal rights.

Of course, this whole process is not only happening in the Eastern 
Mediterranean and only in recent years, but it is a timeless condition, 
as old as the concepts of war and imperialist interventions. And of 
course, there is no need for there to be a formally active state of war 
for a person to decide to follow the path of refugee, but also a 
thousand or two other reasons that may have to do with the 
economic-political-religious situation inside a country. country, a 
situation that most often comes from the imperialist interventions 
(military or just political/economic) that preceded it.

The advance of capitalism and economic imperialism in the Third World - 
and not only that, let's not forget post-Soviet Eastern Europe - the 
over-exploitation of these countries by Western capital and the 
disintegration of local societies, create timeless waves of economic 
immigrants anyway /refugees,  who man the working classes of the 
countries they arrive in, either as "surplus labor", i.e. unemployed, or 
as degraded, cheap workers, without rights, used in order to inflate the 
profits of local bosses. The position of the "local" workers and of 
course the most radical and revolutionary part among them, is always on 
the side of these people, who  are an integral part of our class.

https://anarchism.espivblogs.net/2024/01/17/ergatiki-taxi-i-klassiki-marxistiki-proseggisi-kai-oi-anarchikes-paremvaseis-2o-meros/
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